Summit May Ride on Albright Mideast Visit

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrives here today in a bid to put together a trilateral summit that is running up against opposition from numerous quarters.

The three-way encounter, consisting of President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, is meant to serve as the occasion for breakthrough talks that would produce a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

At stake is not just a handshake on the White House lawn but a crucial chance for moving the tortured peace process beyond its most enduring hurdles by a Sept. 13 deadline for the final treaty.

Barak, his political survival possibly riding on it, desperately wants the meeting; Clinton also is said to want a successful summit to crown an important diplomatic policy.

But the Palestinians, at least publicly, have branded any three-way meeting now as a waste of time. And some in Barak’s own, rebellious government have added their voices in opposition.

In advance of Albright’s second visit here in three weeks, the American special envoy, Dennis B. Ross, spent the last several days meeting with Barak and his aides to probe how far the Israeli government is willing to go in conceding land and satisfying other Palestinian demands, according to officials involved in the talks.

Barak is reported to be prepared to relinquish control of more than 90% of the West Bank, including the strategic Jordan Valley, among other points. His internal security minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, after meeting secretly with Arafat on Sunday night, said Monday that a summit is “close.”

Others were less optimistic. Sensing that Barak’s eagerness for a summit could translate into gains for the Palestinian side, Arafat has been resisting Israeli and American overtures. He visited the Tunisian capital, Tunis, once and Cairo twice before deigning to see Ross on Monday.

Over the weekend, Arafat, in an especially fiery speech in the West Bank city of Nablus, threatened to proclaim an independent state “in the next weeks” regardless of what happens in negotiations.

Emerging from his Monday session with Arafat, Ross insisted that there was “potential” for a summit and said Albright will assess the prospects. But Arafat’s senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat, speaking to reporters once Ross had departed, sounded a vastly more negative note. With disagreement between the two sides still so pronounced, Erekat said, a summit now would be “doomed to failure.”

A right-wing member of Barak’s government, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky, used almost the same language to decry a summit at this time. He accused Barak of attempting to bulldoze his way to a summit and final peace treaty without consulting his Cabinet, and with a reckless willingness to make dangerous and overly generous concessions to the Palestinians. Similar criticism came from two other Cabinet ministers Monday.

Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident, told reporters Monday morning that he will quit Barak’s government if the prime minister rushes into final negotiations without establishing bottom-line demands.

Sharansky’s party, Israel With Immigration, has only a few seats in the 120-member parliament, but Sharansky has an eye on his constituency: the 1-million-strong community of immigrants from Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Their votes in last year’s election were considered instrumental in Barak’s landslide victory, and polling by Sharansky’s office indicates that they overwhelmingly oppose concessions such as giving Palestinians any control over Jerusalem or allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is today Israel.

It is these fundamental and emotional issues that would be debated at a summit, which the Israelis want to stage as a 10-day working marathon to begin within the next two weeks.

A document published last week in an Israeli newspaper purports to outline some of the concessions that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are willing to make. Among the elements: Israel would cede up to 96% of the West Bank, evacuate about 40,000 Jewish settlers and give up control of several Arab suburbs of Jerusalem. Israel would also acknowledge the right of return for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes when the Jewish state was formed half a century ago; few would in fact return, but $100 billion in U.S. and European money would be invested over the next 20 years in resettling the refugees at large and improving their lives.

Although the document was discounted officially by the U.S. and Israeli governments, diplomats confirmed the accuracy of some points.